The role of women in Battlestar Galactica

By
I'm watching the new Battlestar Galactica miniseries for the third time. It's the original Sci Fi channel uncut version. The 3 hour version aired on NBC the other night cut out a lot of dialogue that gave some enticing flesh to the skeleton of the story. Of course they left in all of the sex, feh. Any way, so I'm watching the show and I keep thinking about a line that was cut from the 3 hour version of the show. President Roslin remarks to Commander Adama something along the lines of with less than 50,000 of the human race left they needed to get down to the business of having babies to help preserve the race.

In this new version of the late 1970s show two of the main characters, namely Starbuck and Boomer, are now women. In the world of Battlestar Galactica women are fully integrated into the military. They do everything the boys do. Presumably in the civilian arena women do everything the men do as well. So what I keep wondering is, now that humanity is in a position where reproduction is of the utmost importance how will this effect the roles of women? We are the means by which the race propagates itself after all. We bear the children and, in general, are the best at nurturing and rearing them.

If you've only got 50,000 max people left propagation of the species would have to be one of your top priorities. Would you continue to risk potential mothers in such high risk positions as fighter pilots? Will the show address this aspect of the predicament?

Read Michael King's review of the new series, This is not your father's Galactica.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

What's in a flower?

By
Specifically hydrangea flowers. In this post I pointed out that anthocyanin (a family of plant pigments) appears blue at high pH, red at low pH and is responsible for the wide variety of colours in hydrangea flowers. Ilona pointed out that , "in hydrangeas you lower the ph for blue flowers (more acid) and raise it for pink (more alkaline)." I did a bit of checking and found that this is the case . At lower soil pH hydrangea flowers do appear blue and at higher soil pH they appear red. But soil pH is not the only thing that affects the colour of hydrangea flowers. It appears that pH inside the plant cell has an affect as well: Sepal Color Variation of Hydrangea macrophylla and Vacuolar pH Measured with a Proton-Selective Microelectrode Anthocyanin changes its color depending on pH (Goto 1987, Brouillard 1988, Goto and Kondo 1991). In strong acidic conditions it shows red, in neutral, purple and in alkaline, blue. But generally the vacuolar pH of plant cells is weakly aci
Read more

Treating autism as traumatic brain injury

By
I've been doing research into autism, dyspraxia, how the normal brain works, and how an autistic/dyspraxic brain works (or doesn't work). Traumatic injury to different parts of the brain can cause the same problems suffered by autistic and dyspraxic children. Compare this list of the functions of different parts of the brain and the problems caused by injuries to those areas with these descriptions of dyspraxia and autism. What is Developmental Dyspraxia? Developmental dyspraxia is a disorder characterized by an impairment in the ability to plan and carry out sensory and motor tasks. Generally, individuals with the disorder appear "out of sync" with their environment. Symptoms vary and may include poor balance and coordination, clumsiness, vision problems, perception difficulties, emotional and behavioral problems, difficulty with reading, writing, and speaking, poor social skills, poor posture, and poor short-term memory. Although individuals with the disorder may b
Read more

Battlestar Galactica needs more colour?

By
Here are the letters I mentioned in the previous post. The one that started it (I'm guessing these letters were written after the show's first airing at the end of 2003): Galactica Needs More Diversity The problem I had with Battlestar Galactica was there were no major and very few minor African American characters. There were no Black men in the show at all or if they were, they had virtually no screentime. In the original series, Boomer and Tigh were both played by African American actors. In this rendition of Battlestar, those characters were played by Asian and White actors. In the Caprica city, there no African American extras. On the Galactica's bridge, there was only one African American actress. Another Black actress could be found playing a religious official that swore in the new President of the colonies. This was very troubling to me. Do you not want African Americans to watch your show? Do you want to project the idea that African Americans are not part of the
Read more